By SAM DILLON

          MEXICO CITY, Feb. 22 -- Fernando Benítez Gutiérrez, a
          journalist who helped formulate new visions of Mexican identity
          in his penetrating reports on the Indian cultures and through the cultural
          publications that he founded, died of a heart attack on Monday.

          He was 88, a government biography said.

          Perhaps his most important work was a four-volume "Indians of
          Mexico," published in 1967. It was based on nearly 20 years of reporting
          that included extensive travels by burro and on foot through the most
          remote areas.

          "He made an invisible population visible to us," Carlos Fuentes, the
          novelist, wrote of Mr. Benítez in a remembrance published today in the
          newspaper Reforma. "He once told me that when an Indian dies, it's as
          though an entire library had died."

          Mr. Benítez's career sprawled across half a century, from the 30's
          through the 80's.

          As editor of a series of cultural supplements to Mexican newspapers,
          Mr. Benítez encouraged several important writers, including Carlos
          Monsivais, José Emilio Pacheco and Elena Poniatowska, early in their
          careers.

          "He was a powerful promoter of talent," Ms. Poniatowska said in an
          interview today.

          Mr. Benítez was born in Mexico City. The Biographical Dictionary of the
          Mexican Government lists his birthdate as Jan. 16, 1912.

          Two newspapers, La Jornada and Universal, put his birthdate as Jan. 16,
          1910. A reporter at La Jornada said she had seen government tax
          documents listing that birthdate.

          He was the oldest of four children. His father, the heir to a mining fortune
          who was educated in Paris, eventually frittered away the wealth drinking
          in bars, Mr. Benítez told associates.

          His youth played out against the epic violence of the Mexican revolution,
          leaving him with images "that influenced the rest of my life," Mr. Benítez
          wrote in an essay on the absurd slaughter suffered mainly by poor
          Mexicans in that period.

          "I understood that there was not one Mexico, but many Mexicos," he
          wrote. "The Indians, the slaves on the plantations, the wretched of the
          earth. They were as innocent as children. They weren't civilized, rational
          beings. And almost all of them would be murdered by generals who
          were, in fact, rational beings."

          Mr. Benítez's writings portrayed a revolution sparked by humanistic
          ideals that were gradually betrayed.

          Nonetheless, he believed that successive presidents of the Institutional
          Revolutionary Party, which has governed without interruption since 1929,
          made important contributions to development, and he occasionally
          defended presidents against other writers' criticism.

          He was private secretary to the Interior Minister in 1946, and in 1991,
          President Carlos Salinas de Gortari named him ambassador to the
          Dominican Republic.

          A massacre of students by a government-sponsored paramilitary group in
          1971 provoked severe accusations by prominent intellectuals against
          President Luis Echeverría, according to an account written by the
          historian Enrique Krauze.

          "We have to choose between Echeverría and fascism," Mr. Benítez
          responded to the president's critics, Mr. Krauze related.

          Mr. Benítez's career began in 1936 with El Nacional, a government
          paper. After he became editor there, he founded a supplement called The
          Mexican Magazine of Culture.

          Leaving El Nacional in 1949, he joined another paper, Novedades,
          where he founded a similar supplement, Mexico in Culture, editing it
          through the 50's.

          In the 60's, he edited Culture in Mexico, a section of the magazine
          Siempre! In the late 70's and 80's, he edited cultural sections for two
          other papers, Unomasuno and La Jornada.

          "He wrote very well, and he wrote a lot, but he didn't limit himself to
          that," the poet Gabriel Zaid wrote today. "Instead, he passed his life
          helping others to write, organizing literary circles that worked
          marvelously, greatly elevating Mexican culture."

          Surviving are his wife, Georgina Conde Taboada; a son, Fernando
          Benítez Conde; and a sister, Ana.